With the tagline “Come See What’s Cookin’,” one might expect the Bachelor of Fine Arts Graphic Design Thesis Exhibition to be a somewhat gustatory experience. Tuesday’s opening reception begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Department of Art Gallery in McComas Hall and continues in the Visual Arts Center for the evening’s remainder. There may be food at the event, but the students crafting the exhibition have been whipping up graphic design stew, as they call it, rather than beef stew. The galleries will display walls of calendars, posters and T-shirt designs rather than tables of crème brûlée and beignets.
Twenty-one seniors will display printed design work created during their time as Mississippi State University graphic design concentration students, from Smithsonian Institute posters and Annie Leibovitz magazine pages, to wine bottle packaging they have created both in and outside of structured design studio classes.
Jamie Mixon, professor of art and graphic design emphasis coordinator, teaches this year’s senior graphic design portfolio course, ART 4640 Advanced Portfolio, and said she has for many years. Mixon and Jamie Runnels, associate professor of art, are handling the spring 2013 class due to the large number of students enrolled this semester.
Mixon said each of the students will display a book of their final body of work at the exhibition, but the select projects hanging on the show’s walls are left almost entirely to the students’ discretion.
“Students are free to include a variety of work as long as it measures up to their strongest work created in the design studio,” she said. “Students often display work created in an internship, or work created for a client, or created just for the sake of pursuing something in the design arena that they are passionate about.”
The ART 4640 students created printed promotional material and final portfolio books to display in the exhibition as well as a portfolio website.  Though the work is finalized behind a glass screen, Mixon said the designs are created to be printed, physical objects.
“Many pieces that are included in their final portfolio/body of work are printed pieces – posters, editorial designs, etc.,” she said. “They are best shown as print material.”
The exhibition allows patrons to view the students’ work outside of their portfolio website, in their intended print form. Marion Morrow, senior fine arts major, said her printed designs provide a tactile experience and sense of satisfaction wholly unlike the glow of a computer monitor.
“Seeing something on screen versus actually holding it in your hands is so different. Being able to touch and feel a design after hovering over a computer for hours is just so rewarding,” she said.
Sweta Desai, senior art major, said in an email she will display projects that come from various inspirations and perform multiple functions, including a 2014 calendar, an exhibition poster for the street artist, Banksy, and a T-shirt design to raise money to study abroad in Italy.
Desai said the projects, though multifarious, clearly came together to create an exhibit representing each individual student as a graphic designer and even gave her a fresh perspective on her own work.
“While setting up the exhibition and looking around at the other students’ work, I realized that everyone had their own distinct style, and I believe it was that moment when I saw my own,” she said.
The exhibit’s promotional posters illustrate pots full of design stew rather than beef stew, but the exhibition features work full of as much heart and soul as a home cooked meal, according to the students. As Desai said, the catalyst for her interest in art was her parents’ constant arts and crafts projects when she was young. This enthusiasm eventually grew into her passion for graphic design, even as a student at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science.
“I feel as though designing had always been a passion of mine and that graphic design had captured both sides of my life,” she said.